72 inch wrap. Was: A Couple of Incoherent Questions

[Lennart Sorensen]

On Wed, Nov 17, 2004 at 01:33:23AM -0500, Bill Mudry wrote:
> So is it more for convenience of reading than older monitors still being
> used out there? I think in part it depends on what you get used to, to
> some degree. Mind you how much neck swaying you have to do would
> depend on how high a resolution the text is showing at in the first place.
> I can see that a longer line would show up over a wider angle dispersion
> on a lower resolution. I find at 1280 it does not bother me at all.
> 
> I agree that a more sensible way to handle this would be better wrapping
> set to whatever each user wishes. That way it should not matter.

The problem is that the receiver doesn't know as much as teh sender
about the contents, hence the best person to format the text is the
sender.  If I am sending some source code in email, it really better not
get wrapper even if the programmer was silly and didn't keep their lines
at a resonable length.  Changes in white space do affect some source
code.  The sender knows what the content is and how it can and should be
formated, the receiver may not know, and the client email program sure
isn't likely to know.  Even HTML needs <pre></pre> to get around the
fact sometimes the authore really does know better what the format MUST
be on that chunk of the content.

> The down side to doing this is not knowing when to hit the return (at least
> on a first line) at 72 characters without the <argh> need to literally count
> them. I am sure most of like to just start tying a message and get it off
> as soon as we can.

Get a real email program and/or editor.  Problem solved.  I recomend
mutt + vim. :)

> Just a thought. I do type out a distance and have got used to hitting enter 
> to start a new line. Would it not work better if I just kept typing? What I
> saw of my messages sent back to me, the words *do* wrap (at 72 char.) at 
> the users end. Therefore wouldn't most mail clients just naturally
> chop up lines into 72 characters no matter how long I send them? What I 
> find disturbing to the eyes is lines that are choppy, ie. not multiples
> of 72 characters.

I just keep typing.

> As a test, I have taken out the returns on the above paragraph only.
> Someone who does have wrapping at a longer length, though, would
> end up getting very long lines that (agreed) would be more distracting
> to read. I just checked and found that a person can get rid of some of
> that choppiness by changing the width of their email window.

The thread someone pointed to had a lot of opinions on it.

Just remember many of the people on this list do use text only email
readers and do use 80 character displays to read it.  We are not
switching to a GUI just so some people can use crappy software. :)

Lennart Sorensen
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